Memory in the grooves

Music is different from any other form of artistic expression. It is that much more immediate. We are surrounded by music, unlike paintings, films and sculptures, which need to be viewed in a galleries or movie theatres or through a TV. We're also surrounded by architecture, but the balance between purely "functional" buildings, of no artistic merit, and the breathtaking works of art of Norman Foster or Gaudi, is weighted very definitely in favour of the former. With the advent of CDs, then MP3 players and now the internet, music has become portable, ever-present, and we are listening almost constantly to it, some of it unremarkable or downright shoddy, but a lot of it sublime or, at the very least, possessing some form of artistic merit.

As such, music has a singular ability to become the mirror and expression of society's collective consciousness, and in a much more indirect way than, say, the Mona Lisa is part of our collective consciousness. The mere strains of certain string instruments, or one or two piano notes can evoke a wealth of feelings and memories, the response to the music being less defined, more latent, than the feelings we get when confronted by a familiar and beautiful painting, dance routine, film or sculpture. Which is not to say those art forms do not have subliminal levels of collective reference points, but just that music probably has more, and that it operates on a much more instinctive level, through its focus on melody, rhythm and tempo. There is also just that bit more room for the abstract, even in popular forms of music, from Mozart to Brian Wilson to movie scores, hence reinforcing the sense that music is the foremost cultural web, at the very least in modern western society. A lot of people will be familiar with the Sistine Chapel's ceiling. A whole lot more will know Nessun Dorma, and have memories of Italia '90 whenever they hear it on the radio.

This memetic potential that music posesses is in itself a rich vein for artisitic expression, and excitingly, more and more artists seem to be focusing on notions of memory, both collective and personal, and reflecting the passage of time, not just their own (as mortality), but the massive evolution and change our entire planet has been undergoing in recent years. 

Of course, memory and a sense of the passage of time have long been staples of popular music. Composers such as Mozart and Tchaikovsky explored myths and stories from popular collective folklore in their music, whilst themes of nostalgia and ageing are frequent among singer-songwriters like Brian Wilson, Neil Young and Bob Dylan. But the developments in modern technology, coupled with the emergence of a new generation of musicians and producers who grew up in ages when TV, radio and other media had become omnipresent, has made things even more interesting lately. With a desire to capture something that feels lost to them, they have been injecting weird sounds from the past, elusive memetic audio utterings, that re-create a world that feels long-revolved, if it even ever existed at all.

Of course, this again is not really that new, and hasn't been since the early days tape looping and sampling, and Ambient music has long since used such techniques to express a sense of nostalgia, sadness or loss.

 The Disintegration Loops by William Basinski

The expert in this regard is undoubtedly Willian Basinski, though I would say that, being a massive fan of his. Basinski's masterpiece is The Disintegration Loops series (2062 Records, 2001-2003), four massive albums of droning loops that crystallise the New Yorker's seminal vision. The back history of the series is a fascinating insight into the effects history and memory can have on the listening experience. In early 2001, Basinski found a load of boxes of old tape loops he had made in the eighties and decided to transfer them to digital. Already we're looking at a process of storing the past, of wrapping up memories in digital cotton wool. But, as the ageing tapes passed through the machinery, they began to degrade, flakes of ferrite crubbling off and dispersing into the player. An amzed Basinski noted that, rather than completely destroy the music, the latter was in fact enhanced, as the repetitive synth drones became distorted and deformed, making for an unpredictable and disorientating listening experience.

As such, Basinski's music becomes a perfect mirror for the memory process itself. Memories are like his loops: elusive, fractured, intangible. But even greater poignancy was heaped upon the Disintegration Loops when, on the 9th of September 2001, the Twin Towers were destroyed, supposedly as Basinski was transferring the loops to digital. Legend has it that the composer was standing on his balcony, watching the horror unfold whilst the loops continued to crackle, warp and dissolve out of the speakers behind him. True or not, the story adds a weight to listening to The Disintegration Loops not unlike that which makes the experience of gazing at Van Gogh's 'Wheatfield with Crows', apocryphally supposed to have been painted just before the Dutchman shot himself, so troubling. The Disintegration Loops become intrinsically linked to this one, world-changing event, and every listen never fails to remind me of the emotional turmoil I felt on that terrible day. 

William Basinski

Not linked to a specific global event, but no less evocative, is 2009's 92982 (2062 Records, 2009), Basinski's best album since The Disintegration Loops series. Like those albums, 92982 is made up of old tape music mastered to digital, and again the effects of the recorder on the ageing tape twist and distort the sounds he created way back in 1982 (the year of my birth - yikes!), turning them into something new altogether. The album's title relates to the exact date of the original recording, and the memories and impressions of the event are etched into the album's grooves - the loop was recorded with the window open onto a balmy Brooklyn night and, particularly on "92982.2", you can hear the sounds of the bustling city outside filtering into the space between the synth loops and digital effects: helicopters, police sirens, traffic... So, even though 92982 doesn't reference a universally-recognised event such as 9/11, it still captures a feeling and evokes a time and place, one which requires a bit of imagination, as each listener recreates his or her impressions or memories of New York City. 

It is, of course, almost a pre-requisite for ambient and drone records to have this evocative, sensory quality. After all, most do not feature vocals, so the music needs to have a tangible sense of atmosphere. LaMonte Young, one of the founders of modern drone, placed his music in the context of the space in which it was created in - his loft appartment and recording space called the Dream House. Accordingly, his music is often weird and psychedelic, like Hawkwind slowed right down and stripped to the bare bones. The Dream House is a wild laboratory, and the drones Young created, along with his partner Marian Zazeela, are the fantastical experiments that resulted from this peculiar space. Accordingly, you don't need to have actually been to the Dream House to get a feel for what it was like.

Even more abstract was Brian Eno's "Ambient" series, 4 records (one not by the man himself) designed to evoke unspecific spaces and atmospheres through music, and still the most distinctive ambient recordings of all time. Of them all, Ambient 1: Music For Airports (EG, 1978), is the most conceptually cohesive, its title basically telling you the whole story. It's an album that can be listened to attentively or, like sounds in an airport, allowed to drift into the background, a sonic coccoon. It doesn't really evoke an airport per se, but rather that general feeling you get when you're stuck somewhere sterile and futuristic, waiting for an unspecified event, locked in your own mind, far from home. 

In a similar style, Michigan-based dronesters Windy and Carl (left)'s Depths (Kranky, 1998), a monstrous double-LP of slow-moving, earth-shattering guitar drones that, along with Earth's Earth 2 (Sub Pop, 1993),  pretty much defines modern rootsy drone. In my previous drone article, I made a rather simplistic, but I think useful, distinction between futuristic drone (Cluster, LaMonte Young, Klaus Schulze's Cyborg, Eleh...) and the drone that is more linked to metal and folk, the kind poured out by Skullflower, Double Leopards or SUNN O))). Windy and Carl sit very much in this second category, at least on Depths, and, as its name and artwork suggest, its inspiration lies in the murky rivers and babbling creeks of North America's untamed forests, probably linked to the duo's native Michigan. As such, despite the fact that this is a pretty fucking loud album, its vibe, and the images it conjures up, are distinctly pastoral, making me think of the writings of David Guterson (Snow Falling on Cedars), or the untamed Alaskan setting of Herzog's Grizzly Man. Again, drone or ambient music, with its vast spaces, lack of clear vocal presence and reliance on atmosphere, becomes the vehicle for a memetic evocation of a specific, but elusive set of surroundings, just as Basinski's 92982 evokes a specific, but today mostly imaginary, moment in time. Such music becomes the moment where dwindling individual memories collide with the collective imagination. 

I would argue that, by their very nature, most drone and ambient albums are used as a channel to memories, distant sensations and collective memes. The list is lengthy, but some great examples would be Black Sea by Fennesz (Touch Records, 2008), Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks by Eno (EG, 1983), "I Refute It Thus" by Urthona (Head Heritage, 2008), Touch Food by Phill Niblock (2003, Touch Records, and which comes complete with a book of photos, to help cement the visual element to the soundscapes) and Hildur Gudnadottir's Without Sinking (Touch Records, 2009). The beauty of these albums often lies in the very personal journeys they help you embark on.

The ambient and drone artists of the last 50-odd years paved the way in terms of "memory music", particularly through their embracing of new technology as ways of creating feelings, atmospheres and evocations. But now, in the UK and the USA, two parallel strands of music, created by people who grew up in the information-overload eras of the eighties and nineties, may just be taking things to a new level altogether.

In the US, this is called "hypnagogic pop", referring to the transitional moment between sleep and wakefulness. It's quite a good term for acts like Oneohtrix Point Never, Pocahaunted and Emeralds, whose music rests in a strange Twilight Zone between most of the musicians' background in garage and noise, their almost-musicological embracing of 60s and 70s pop and rock, and the inspiration of once-obsolete eighties psychedelic, the kind that gave us tripped-out rock bands such as Psychic TV, Echo & The Bunnymen and Dream Syndicate, but also Kate Bush, Tom Tom Club, latter-period Talk Talk and full sensory assault movies like Predator, Aliens, Evil Dead, Top Gun and Blade Runner. 

Pocahaunted

 

For me, this background in the fringe of American music, specifically noise, is the fundamental characteristic of "hypnagogic pop", along with their magpie-ish approach to popular Anglo-American culture. Despite their embracing of pop (with Ariel Pink stating that even Hall & Oates stem from experimental music), this uniquely varied genre remains resolutely underground, released on indy labels like Not Not Fun or New Age Tapes and with little promotion or commercial concerns. The diversity on offer makes it particularly hard to approach or take in. Pocahaunted, for example, an all-female duo now sadly defunct, took a guitar/drums base (think Lightning Bolt, but slower and more elegant) and filtered it through dub, Fleetwood Mac power pop, traditional chanted music and rough psychedelia a la Thirteenth Floor Elevators. Their output, like that of "hypnagogic" wunderkind James Ferraro (who also ploughs an offbeat, dreamy psych furrow, though one tainted by looped electronica and drone), is prodigious, but the monumental Island Diamonds (Not Not Fun, 2008) album is a great place to start and be entranced by the duo's modernist take on age-old psych-folk. Their collaboration with drone/noise act Robedoor, Hunted Gathering (Digitalis, 2007), is also essential, though more in keeping with the pure noise/drone side of modern American underground music.

Also worth listening to is Grouper, the moniker of another former noise-er, Liz Harris who now lays her dreamy, reverb-drenched vocals over delicate folk arpeggios and wisps of listing ambience. Again, a background in subtly-shifting noise gives Harris a distinctive knack for creating dense atmospheres and murkily psychedelic undercurrents that seem to come at you from somewhere far away in both space and time. The result is truly spectral, with the phantoms of souls long gone being channeled particularly effectively on 2008's wonderful Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill (Type Records).

In contrast to Ferraro and Pocahaunted, Emeralds and Oneohtrix Point Never (aka Daniel Lopatin) take a more sedate approach, using a fascination with vintage synths to take the droning template of noise music and strip it down to something that returns to Eno, Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream, via video game music, film soundtracks and 80s New Age. On Lopatin's Rifts (No Fun, 2009), an immense compilation of his best electro-psych tracks, you are transported both backwards and forwards. Some of the drifting synth melodies efforlessly evoke the TD of Phaedra and Rubycon, lengthy, melancholic and weightless; others will have you remembering the first time you picked up a Game Boy to play Super Mario Bros. It can be cheesy and retro, but also nostalgic and timeless, remembering a time (circa 1979-82) when the future seemed so close, as Britain and America emerged from the Industrial Age armed with metal and plastic to forge a "Brave New World". That it hasn't yet happened just makes the music of Oneohtrix Point Never and Emeralds more beguiling.

In the UK, things are typically more "concrete" and thought-through, with our answer to America's "hypnagogic" spectral music being given the name "hauntology" by Wire journalist Simon Reynolds, who also coined the term "post-rock" (so quite prolific in the genre-naming field), in reference to a theory by Jacques Derrida wherein humanity at the end of history would "begin to orient itself towards ideas and aesthetics that are thought of as rustic, bizarre or "old-timey", in other words the specter of its common history.

I'm not sure all musical  "hauntologists" are familiar with Derrida, but it is undeniable that these artists are following a similar philosophy with regards to their music. The massive progress in technology means music can be conjured from nowhere using computers and sequencers, we are in the midst of ultimate musical futurism, but these artists find more inspiration when using this technology from decades long since revolved, even since before the artists themselves were born! It that respect, I am reminded of the films of Tarantino, which cross-reference decades of movie under-culture, a testament to his years as a voracious consumer of VHS, the first format to immortalise film art in a format accesible to all, as vinyl did for music. They have since been replaced by DVDs, CDs, mpegs and the internet, veritable treasure troves of art and culture once deemed lost, all at arm's reach for current generations of musicians and creatives. 


At the centre of the musical "hauntology" scene is the Ghost Box label, the brain child of two musical mavericks, Julian House and Jim Jupp (left), who contribute about 90% of the label's output under a variety of monikers: The Focus Group (House), Belbury Poly, Eric Zann (Jupp). I will admit to finding a lot of their works hard to get into, mainly because they are mostly made up of very short tracks (around 90 seconds to 2 minutes per track), something I often find difficult. But there is no denying the clarity of the label's vision, both musical and artistic (each record is housed in an immediately identifiable sleeve, with consistent artwork and liner notes). The world of Ghost Box is pure "hauntology": their kitchen-sink approach takes in a wealth of reference points from 5 decades of British pop culture: Hammer horror films, psychedelic music, Tomorrow's World, Dr Who, industry strikes, radio shows and early morning TV. It's a beguiling mixture, strongest on Belbury Poly's The Owl's Map (which includes a guide to the Hammer-esque fictional town of Belbury), The Focus Group's We Are All Pan's People and The Advisory Circles's Other Channels. The music, touched by The Kinks (in their Are The Village Green Preservation Society mode), English folk, early electronica such as that of Delia Derbyshire and The BBC Radiophonic Workshop, advertising jingles and modern styles like trance or noise, is equal parts wistful nostalgia (The Wire mention things like public service announcements and the Open University) and unsettling disquiet. Strange voices emerge from crackling radio static, retro synths battle for space among pounding percussion and hip-hop breaks, and at all times you're left wondering what's going on and where you stand.

My favourite of their albums is Ouroborindra (2005) by Jim Jupp under his Eric Zann moniker, itself a horror reference to H.P. Lovecraft that somewhat sets the tone - this is a dark, off-kilter album. Hammer horror films form the crux of the album's reference points, and the weird voices and soundtrack samples highlight just how creepy and disturbing the best Hammers were, although much credit has to go to Jupp for highlighting this. Alongside weird sound effects of blowing winds and cawing crows, he creates 5 unsettling tracks of wonky electronica and sophisticated pop, perhaps highlighting "hauntology"'s place not just as a new pop genre, but as an avant-garde pop genre.

Overall, the feeling when listening to the music of the Ghost Box artists, much like Oneohtrix Point Never or Emeralds or even Pocahaunted, is that you are in the presence of the specter of a future that could have happened, but ultimately didn't. It's ectoplasmic music, seeping through into our world via many of the same channels, but distant, elusive and, ultimately, troubling. 


In contrast, Mordant Music's muse is all the more current than that of the Ghost Box clique. Or at least more urban, with the electronica further to the fore, and hints of disco, dub and hip hop polluting his dreamy sampled ambience. Dead Air (Mordant), from 2006, shared a twinge of nostalgia and a taste for layered samples and crackly ghost voices with Ghost Box, but, alongside the Public Service Annoucements and excerpts of disembodied TV voices, also laid down pounding beats and hypnotic grooves, effectively bridging the gaps between Ghost Box and Oneohtrix Point Never; and Ghost Box and retro-technoists like Lindstromm. SyMptoMs (Mordant), from 2009, even added live vocals by Mordant's Ian Hicks, making it something of a cousin to Broadcast's electro-psych (fitting, seeing as the Birmingham duo recorded an EP with The Focus Group last year, to much acclaim), and  showing "hauntology"'s ability to take on ghosts of the more recent past like r'n'b and pop songs. 


In this respect, MM can also claim an affinity (again, like Broadcast) with dubstep's mysterious standard bearer Burial. Burial is very different to most of the dubstep artists currently taking London's club scene by storm. A wealth of twenty-something dubstep and wonky/funky producers, such as Kuedo, Joker, Joy Orbison and Ikonika have mined their 80s childhoods for sounds and references that will also be mirrored in the experiences of their audience, from video games (i.e. Kuedo's excellent "Starfox", named after the Nintendo game) to vintage movies (check out Joker's new "Tron" single). 
But Burial is different. For a start, his music is definitely not there just as a way of getting people on the dance floor. It's not that danceable, really. The tracks on both his seminal debut Burial (Hyperdub, 2006) and its exquisite follow-up Untrue (Hyperdub, 2007) use samples and effects lifted from films and pop songs, as well as crackling vinyl static and hazy ambience, much like other "steppas", but these sounds are distorted and manipulated, until voices become unrecognisable, shifting between picthes and even genders (good luck spotting the Christina Aguilera sample on "Archangel"!) and familiar sounds appear far away and alien. With its strong urban vibe, the music of Burial comes across as a nocturnal drive through an indistinguishable city as the ghosts and spirits of its long-gone inhabitants melt fleetingly into reality through the radio and windows. This conveys a supreme sense of melancholy to Burial's music, taking it above and beyond the best of his peers, even Kode 9.

Coming full circle, it would be a big mistake to sign off a piece on memories and ghosts in music without writing about James Kirby, aka Leyland Kirby, aka The Caretaker (and several other pseudonyms beyond those two). Kirby was born in Stockport in the mid-seventies and developped a fascination for ancient vinyl-edition songs from the 1920s and horror movies. His The Caretaker moniker is a direct reference to Stephen King's seminal The Shining, in which Jack Torrance (famously played by another Jack, Nicholson, in the film adaptation) is hired to be the caretaker of a old mountain-top hotel, only to find himself possessed by the unquiet spirits of deceased guests. Condemned to be the ghostly caretaker for eternity, Torrance is the perfect mirror reflection for Kirby, the latter's music, built from his collection of scratchy 1920s vinyls, which he loops and manipulates into hypnotic dark ambient pieces, seeming to be less actual songs than the echoes through time of a long-ended cocktail party. This approach is similar to that of avant-garde composer Philip Jeck, whose superb Stoke (Touch Records, 2002) and Sand (Touch Records, 2008) albums used old vinyl records to create wildily evocative and sophisticated compositions (Jeck's music is too sophisticated to be best served here, though "Pax" on Stoke is a perfect piece of proto-Caretaker hauntology and a benchmark of memory music). Revenant music by any measure of the term, The Caretaker is best approached on his most recent LP, Persistent Repition of Phrases (History Always Favours The Winners, 2008), in which snatches of music hall tunes, distant orchestras and fading piano and string melodies drift around your senses like a lonely breeze.

But he took things to a particular height on Sadly The Future Is No Longer What It Was (History Always Favours the Winners, 2009), a titanic 3-disk magnum opus recorded under the name Leyland Kirby, one that references both past (it was his grandfather's name) and present (Leyland is his second name), and a guise that allows him to take the best of The Caretaker's universe, and strip it down to its most harrowing bones. There's an absence of sampled voices or strings or melodies, the only non-Kirby sounds on here apparently being ambient noises like klaxons, rain, traffic or wind, by-products perhaps of the recording space, something that therefore evokes Basinski's 92982 (see how we come full circle). As with Basinski or Eno, the music here is sparse, either looped piano chords or delicate waves of mournful synth or dissonant grey noise, and the feeling you get is that this is the artist alone, still, as with The Caretaker, staring into the inner memories of the past, but unwilling this time to try and conjure them back. The ghosts are fading, the future is bleak, no longer the Brave New World vision of old, and the man is alone. It's a harrowing, exhausting listen, but there is no doubt that Sadly The Future Is No Longer What It Was is a stupendous achievement. 

Sadly The Future Is No Longer What It Was by Leyland Kirby

Memory, elusive and deceptive, will always be a favoured domain of musical exploration for singers, musicians and performers of all genres. But, from Ghost Box's hauntologists to drone and ambient masters like Eno, Basinski and LaMonte Young, via the new "hypnagogic pop" of America and Burial's ghostly take on modern dance, there are some disparate artists who are intelligently going beyond the base retro nostalgia that has given us the current wave of uber-trendy NME bands (I'm looking at you, Libertines, Killers, Bloc Party, The Strokes and, blech, Kasabian) and so many endless money-grabbing reunions, to delve into music that is challenging, ecelctic and unpredictable. Ghosts of the past, both individual and collective, seep out of CDs and vinyl and mp3s, making the memories -grasped at, missed, held for a few heart-rending seconds- the centrepiece of the sound, rather than just a tool to gain indy cred. It's an emotionally draining experience to listen to some of this music, as hard to get your head around as that dream you had last night that is already fading, or that long-gone event that impacted your life, however briefly. There are so many phantoms out there, imagined, remembered, forgotten or real. Time to bring them into the musical light.

February on my iPod!!!!

Yet more dubstep filled my ears in February, as I did my usual thing and went completely overboard and obsessive over the stuff. 

Not that I'm complaining - dubstep is phenomenal! I truly believe it to be the most modern and timely genre to have emerged in the last few years. The heavy grooves, icy synth lines and sparse sense of melancholy that traverses nearly every dubstep track fit like musical gloves onto most people's daily vistas of urban jungles, council estate towers, illuminated financial districts, bustling and overcrowded public transport services, and all the emotional confusion that these locations automatically conjure up in human souls. It's the music of lonely people in a busy, overflowing world, as true and emotive as a Dylan ballad or the mournful atmosphere of Slowdive's Pygmalion.

Skream is something of the prodigal son of dubstep, at the tender age of 21. He's been a feature of the scene since he was 15 or so, and although his first, eponymous, album was poorly received, his EPs and singles, such as Midnight Request Line/I (single, 2005, Tempa) are considered must-haves among clubbers and journos alike. "Midnight Request Line" is something of an anthem for dubstep fans, and is surely the genre's most famous track. And with good reason - it's infectious, carried by a supreme bass line, with brilliant synth gurgles and jittery effects. The same consistent brilliance can be found on Skreamizm Vol.2 (2006, Tempa), possibly the strongest of his Skreamizm series of EPs. "Blipstream" carries the same nocturnal, futuristic vibe as "Midnight Request Line", with wobbly bass, dark atmospherics and a general aura of drifting nocturnal urbanity. It also -as does the whole EP- reminds me a lot of Burial's debut. It's dark but not necessarily cold. Funky but slow-paced. Great modern stoner music! "0800 Dub" is much more trance-y, close to ambient elctronica or slow-paced IDM, with a fantastic synth hook throughout and ghostly sampled vocals, whilst "Deep Concentration" is pure funky dub and "Morning Blues" is all jittery electronics, hints of hip-hop and dance. It's certainly one of the best EPs out there, and proves the kid has talent.

This is also a good opportunity to re-appraise Burial's self-titled debut album (2006, Hyperdub). I didn't take to it with quite the same speed and enthusiasm that I did Untrue, and I still consider the latter to be the better album, but Burial is still awesome. It has a distinctly conceptual feel, embodied in the artwork with its aerial picture of South London. It feels like a nocturnal trip through the city's dark, damp streets, gazed out through the windows of a near-empty bus (one track is even called "Night Bus"), from the driving rhythms of the opening track "Distant Lights" (again an evocative title) until the effects-laden, mysterious and sparse closer "Pirates". Voices are fleeting, ghostly and distorted, adding to the sense of loneliness and isolation, whilst Burial expertly weaves found-sounds, samples and pulsating grooves together to leave you with a grim, unsettling and deeply emotional whole. No wonder he remains the genre's biggest star. He's a genius, simple as.

Slightly different from your average dubstep, and proof that the genre is evolving and globalising, is American producer Flying Lotus' sumptuous Los Angeles (2008, Warp). It may be nearly 2 years old, but fuck it, it gets ALBUM OF THE MONTH status! On it, Flying Lotus takes apart different aspects of modern electronic music and recombines the separate elements, be they thumping dub bass lines, jittery beats, aggressive breaks or swooping synth lines. Each track is short, but he packs so much into them it's unreal, so they blend into one-another, creating a frantic, ever-shifting and captivating atmosphere that took me completely by surprise. You find yourself lurching from the post-dance grooves of "Beginners Falafel" to the dreamy modern soul of "RobertaFlack", always finding something surprising and unexpected in each track. This is the future of dubstep, hip-hop, IDM and break-beat all rolled into one! And he'll be live at Fabric soon, Londoners!

Last dubstep album for this month was Degenerate (2005, Planet Mu) by Vex'd, one of the very first full-length albums the genre ever produced. Sadly, Vex'd, a duo, have gone their separate ways, with one more album to be released this year as some sort of funky epitaph. But what a legacy! Their output may be slight, but Vex'd were among the biggest innovators of the UK underground, and they show it on Degenerates, a truly forward-thinking album that maintains the massive bass grooves of traditional dubstep, but moves things closer to rave and techno culture. The percussion is harsh and cold, mechanical even and tracks are long. The sonic effects, ranging from highly distorted sampled vocals to freaky surges of synth noise and unexpected bleeps and blurps, are equally aggressive, sharp shards of white musical light that surge out of the industrial mix. But the album still grooves like a motherfucker, "Pop Pop V.I.P" being a particularly infectious stomper. The CD comes with a second disk of singles, which make it quite a lot to sit through, but if you want to take your party to another level, there are few better, more intelligent or more drastic dubstep albums out there.

I did take a breather from dubstep at various points throughout the month (though with albums by Benga, Kode9+Spaceape and Boxcutter winging their way towards me in the post, methinks March will be pretty dubbed up as well!), and returned to my older indulgences in electro and good ole rock.

But let's do some travelling first. Because, apart from dubstep, 2010 has so far been the year of "World" music for me. 

Thanks to the ever-wonderful Wire magazine, I have discovered the lost delight that is Ethiopian music. OK, not that lost, as it has a rave cult following, including director Jim Jarmusch, and this has given us the seminal Ethiopiques series. It was through Jarmusch's Broken Flowers soundtrack that I discovered Mulatu Astatqe, whose Ethiopiques 4: Ethio-Jazz et Musique Instrumentale (1998; Buda Records) is the stand-out of the series, and most popular. It includes the classic "Yèkèrmo Sèw", a masterpiece of subtle, funky jazz. It perfectly encapsulates the Ethiopian sound in its 4+ minutes: smooth, sexy percussion; snappy piano motifs; powerful, chiming horn bursts; and a general atmosphere that is both familiar and delightfully exotic, the soundtrack to a boat cruise down the Nile. Even by African standards (and I'll admit to not being an expert - my knowledge up til now only extended to an adoration of Fela Kuti, and a familiarity of North African "Rai" music that comes from growing up in France), Ethiopian music has a sense of fusion. Where traditional Asian and European music often developed in some form of isolation, Africa was always at a crossroads, and when the sounds of the descendants of African slaves started wafting back across the air waves from the USA and Caribbean, in the form of jazz, be-bop, funk, soul, blues, reggae and even rock, Africa was quick to take note. But there was also influences coming in from a wide range of other areas: salsa and flamenco from Latin America and Spain, chanson from France, traditional singing from Islamic countries. And no country appears to have fused so many influences quite as much as Ethiopia. Ethio Jazz is at times soulful, with keening sax lines and slow, melodic tempos; at others it appears to rage with the same verve and power as the best free jazz (though always more restrained), with guitar solos evoking Sonny Sharrock or even Hendrix. It's smooth jazz with an edge; Western-influenced, but with the sounds of Berber North African drifting into the mix. In other words, it's pretty unique.

Toumani Diabaté sits in another spectrum of African music. His is much more traditional, focusing on lessons and styles that have existed in families like his for generations. He is something of a bard, a "griot" in French, who uses his music as a way of telling stories and evoking imagery that is immediate and intense. Suffice to say that New Ancient Strings (1999, Hannibal), which I discovered by chance through Amazon, is therefore one of the most "true"-sounding records I've heard in a while. Every sound feels authentic and real, steeped in tradition and the wisdom of centuries-old philosophy. It's a sparse album, much more so than his more recent collaborations with the late, great Ali Farka Touré, with Diabaté's kora, a peculiar, and very complicated-looking, traditional west African harp/luth, taking the full centre stage. And it's marvellous. I was left wondering why I'd never heard one before - the shame! It's a graceful, emotional sound, delicate and fleeting, immediately conjuring up visions of the desert sun, of drifting marabout boats and small, mysterious cities of mud and straw. The evocative power of African music, as I mentioned with Mulatu Astatqe, is pretty much unparalleled, and every spin of New Ancient Strings sends me on a journey. Fancy coming along?

But one country that can match those of Africa in terms of musical transportation is, of course, India, and who better to introduce me to the sounds of the subcontinent than Ravi Shankar? The Beatles' mentor is one of the developing world's biggest international stars, and a master of the sitar, the sumptuous, droning "guitar" that has come to define Indian music. His first album, Music of India: Three Ragas (1956, HMV) is a benchmark of Indian, and even "World" music as a whole, bringing the traditional sounds of this massive and mysterious country to a wider, Western audience, and laying the foundations that would eventually lead to Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was also a certain influence on the likes of LaMonte Young and Tony Conrad, with the long, sustained sitar notes and minimal percussion seem like a template for the New York drone of a few years later. Ragas are perfect at evoking specific times of day, and are named as such (morning or evening, for example), making Three Ragas a dreamy, out-of-body listening experience.

Along with New Ancient Strings and Los Angeles, the biggest contender for Album of the Month was By The Throat by Ben Frost (2009, Bedroom Community), a truly wonderful surprise and a striking and original album featuring some of the most out-there elctronica I'd heard in a while. I've seen Aussie-born Icelandic resident Frost's music described as being "ambient", but this is a far cry from the calm, melodic atmospherics of Eno or Eluvium, or even the heavy drone of Windy and Carl. From the very first track, "Killshot", this is an assault, as rumbling bass synths are overlaid with sheets of white noise; these dark, piercing swirls hit you and then recede, like a cold arctic wind gushing out of an icy night sky. On the immediate follow-up, "The Carpathians" (how's that for a gothic reference?), wolves snarl and growl over doom-like piano and ghostly effects, creating a pervasive sense of unease and fear. Sure, at times decayed piano notes and delicate strings lure you into a false sense of security and you feel this may become a modern-day Discreet Music, but then on "Peter Venkam Pt.1" we're treated to jagged cello and ghostly sampled cries, whilst on "Leo Needs a New Pair of Shoes", dry banjo picking and deep, repetitive piano arpeggios evoke John Carpenter's Halloween soundtrack before more glitchy electronic noise kicks in, and the sense of unease is back, bigger and more pressing than before. This is -and maybe this is a theme today- an evocative, atmospheric album. Images of cold grey skies, lost forests and circling packs of wolves played across my mind as I listened the first time, and there is nothing more seductive in music than an album that takes you away from your banal daily routine and into a new world, even if it is one as disquieting as the world of By The Throat.

Time is pressing, so I may have to leave out the rave review of my latest Skullflower discovery, The Paris Working, and push back my review of Sunn O)))'s latest, and my favourite Six Organs of Admittance album, Dark Noontide. Next month, I guess. I will leave the music of the month with a write up on Swedish DJ The Field's From Here We Go Sublime (2007, Kompakt), which may just be the most exhilarating electro-pop/dance album I've discovered since the first Leftfield album. The Field sounds nothing like Leftfield, mind. From Here We Go Sublime is a delightful collection of dreamy and trance-like dance tunes, all masterfully crafted and unbelievably catchy. At first, I was convinced I would find it samey, but I can't seem to go a day without giving it's heart-warming and melancholic tunes a few spins, with "A Paw In My Face", "Everyday" and "Silent", which have all wormed their way into my dance playlists.

Finally, a little word on a couple of movies. Movie of the month has to be A Single Man by Tom Ford (2010). I have not enjoyed myself at the movies so much in well over a year, which is saying something considering it's a bit of a grim proposition. The scintillating Colin Firth (surely the Oscar-winner?) delivers a career-defining performance as a lonely man still reeling from the death of his (male) partner of 16 years, and plotting his own passage from this life. We follow him over the course of this prospective last day, and he's deals with his drunken best friend (Julianne Moore, excellent as always), his neighbours, a tantalising male prostitute, his job, and the tentative seductions of one of his young students (played with poise by the unbelievably handsome Nicholas Hoult, whose figure, face and body Tom Ford seems to sublimate with his camera). Along the way, Firth's character remembers his lost lover, ruminates on the status of a gay relationship's value in the eyes of society in conservative sixties America, and contemplates the option of returning to his native England. It's a dream-like, graceful film, beautifully filmed and with a marvellous score, and is bound to have you suppressing more than a few sniffles by the end. A stunning debut.

Equally composed and intelligent is Doubt (2008, directed by John Patrick Shanley, adapted from his own play), an excellent drama built around a dour headmistress nun's suspicions about her school's resident priest. Meryl Streep, plays the headmistress with typical intelligence, and perfectly conveys her character’s repression, fussiness and restraint, confirming her status as America’s most accomplished actress today. The doubts, only alluded to, but concerning the priest's (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) relationship with one of the boys, permeate the entire film, creating an atmosphere of increased tension as the action slowly unfolds. Shanley perfectly creates a sense of repression, of things always unsaid, and the fear and resentment that this atmosphere imbues in the school's occupants. The priest's guilt is never proved, and even an intervention with the boy's mother (portrayed by Viola Davis, in a scene-stealing performance) fails to bring Streep's Sister Aloysius closer to the truth. But what if she's right? It's a challenging and troubling film, and one well worth renting.

So, another month gone, as election fever hots up in the UK. Labour has closed the gap, but why are we bogged down in personality politics instead of focusing on issues? Is it because none of the parties really have any clear policies? Or just that they realise they are as supine and fawning as each other? Labour or Conservative, all we'll get is more financial strife, relentless war in Iraq and Afghanistan and bowing down to religious zealots. Vote Green. At least they have principles.

Oh, and RIP Keith Alexander and Michael Foot.

Change your bank!!

My father, being a man of greater conscience than most, including me, has set up a rather important little campaign to try to get banks to change their ways. He outlines it all in this article. I have yet to properly follow his lead, for selfish and lazy reasons, but do think I need to get my act together. As should all of us:

http://www.guardianweekly.co.uk/?page=editorial&id=1475&catID=1

Here's to improving our world!

January on my iPod!!

So, after a quick anti-Cameron rant (he's come up with another piece of gibberish covered by Angry Mob here: http://www.angrymob.uponnothing.co.uk/home/56-mailhypocrisy/902-you-leave-your-rights-at-the-door-but-not-your-beliefs, apparently not realising that the existing laws cover dealing with burglars that enter your home, or that he appears to be advocating the killing of burglars regardless of their offense - I doubt he is really, hence why he's talking out of his arse), back to real business and music and movies! And a couple of books to boot!


Genre of the month for me has undoubtedly been DUBSTEP. I had only a very vague idea of what dubstep was until I by chance started reading about it in The Wire's very excellent Primers book, a compilation of some of their most exhaustive retrospectives that covers everything from the avant-rock of Zappa, Beefheart and No Wave, to the adventurous jazz of Sun Ra and Ornette, to modern composition and noise. Essential reading, and among others, one that introduced me to dubstep, this singularly bass-heavy form of electronic underground music.



The current hero of dubstep (apart from Skream!, whom I know less) is Burial, whose 2007 masterpiece Untrue (Hyperdub) has probably been the most listened-to album of mine this month. It's irresistible, perfect, even, with jerky syncopated beats that snake around your ears, whilst throbbing bass lines, infectious synth lines and mournful sampled vocals project an image of dense, nocturnal, urban London into your mind. It's the sound of an early-hours train journey, or a suburban bus ride at night, as the capital's youth drifts from club to party to their homes, lonely souls locked in society's collective comedown. That Burial himself is as mysterious as his music is melancholic only adds to its charm. His self-titled debut, from 2006 (also on Hyperdub), is also fantastic, but harsher and less contemplative, its sub-sonic bass lines throwing a closer link back to drum'n'bass and garage. Untrue, meanwhile, is in a world unto itself.

Also worth grabbing is My Demons by Distance (Planet Mu Records, 2007). Distance, like Burial, is a relatively anonymous DJ, but where Burial's tunes are warm and hook-laden, Distance's are harsh and aggressive, much more synthetic and angular. The bass is still omnipresent, and deep, like a beating heart locked in some Dr Who-ish cyborg's metallic body, but the rhythm tracks crash and pound, and the synth lines are cold and dark, much closer to other forms of electronic music like trance and techno. But tunes like "Weigh Down", with its fabulously distorted vocodered vocal and the angst-ridden title track are pure examples of dubstep at its best.



In a completely different vein is 2009's Waiting for You... by King Midas Sound (Hyperdub), one of a number of projects by versatile DJ and musician Kevin Martin, also of The Bug and Curse of the Golden Vampire (with Justin K Broadrick no less!). For KMS, Martin has allied himself with a poet, Roger Robinson, and Japanese vocalist Hitomi to deliver some slow-burning, romantic and forlorn dubstep that was one of The Wire's top ten albums of last year. It's actually not as consistent or strong as the other two classics named above, but there is no resisting its sad, dreamy vibe and lyrical intensity. Most tracks feature lead vocals and lyrics by Robinson, whose smooth tenor is both seductive and aggressive where needed, but the true classics are when Hitomi kicks in with her dreamlike moan, especially on poisonous "Goodbye Girl". It's a grower, but well worth tracking down.



I also spent a lot of time listening to jazz last month. Pharoah Sanders'  Karma (Impulse!, 1969) is a monumental classic of free-jazz, one of the more underrated albums of the genre. The album is mostly taken up by the 30-minute-long epic "The Creator Has A Master Plan" and whilst I can't say I share the soppy religious sentiment, there is no denying it chimed with the spiritual hippy vibe of the Woodstock Generation, making this, like A Love Supreme and Ascension by Coltrane, or Bitches Brew by Miles Davis, a jazz answer to what bands like Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead were doing. As such, it is modern, intelligent and groovy, with some fantastic free-spirited soloing and irresistible funky undertones. Above all, it is imbued with the kind of deep, heartfelt emotion that too few jazz artists try to approach. An under-appreciated gem from Impulse!


But it pales a tiny bit alongside Ascension (Impulse!, 1966), one of 'Trane's most controversial albums. Ascension followed on from the much-lauded A Love Supreme and Meditations and saw him fully embrace fire music in all its spitting, exploratory, free-form and noisy glory. For jazz purists of the fifties who'd love Kind of Blue, this must have been a nightmare and an insult, and the proof is that it still divides listeners today. But I love it. It may not have A Love Supreme's cohesion and vision, but it more than makes up for it in reckless abandon, sense of adventure and innovation. Coltrane is truly a master here, with some devastating sax work throughout, marvelously directing his crew of free-form geniuses, even as the threaten to fall apart through sheer experimentation. A landmark album, and a true masterpiece.


And no mention of fire music can be made without turning to Archie Shepp, a former disciple of Coltrane's who became something of the guardian of the flame (no pun intended) for the genre, as he even named an album Fire Music. I will admit to not being very familiar with everything he's done, but Live At The Panafrican Festival (BYG Records, 1971) is a must. I will admit, the sound is poor, but as a document of a truly fascinating musical adventure, it's essential. The festival was a celebration of African culture, and sees Shepp not only embracing his own African roots, but also the culture of North Africa where the festival took place, as he brought in a bunch of Algerian musicians to jam with him. The result is a splendid blend of African-tinted American free-jazz, all wailing saxes and hard groove, and joujouka-esque "ethnic" drone and percussive funk. Sure, we can wish the recording also properly captured the speeches made by the militants who spoke over this music (it must have been electric), but sometimes you just have to enjoy what you've got.


Sticking to the seventies, I've also been trawling through a number of old live recordings by two of my favourite "progressive" bands, namely King Crimson and Soft Machine. Frequent readers (if there are any) will know my love for Crimson. So my joy at getting hold of a copy of KCCC 20: Live at the Zoom Club, October 13 1972 (2002) knows no bounds. It's a bootleg recording of the first concert by the short-lived Jamie Muir line-up of Crimson, the one that gave us the excellent Larks Tongues In Aspic album in 73 before crazed percussionist Muir jumped ship. Muir was an experimentalist, having previously played with the likes of Evan Parker and Derek Bailey and, as KC geared up for this gig, unsure of what to play (the "Larks" songs had only just been written and barely fleshed out), he immediately suggested that the band just improvise. And fuck me, did they improvise! Prog is known as a genre for its meticulous restraint, but Crimson were no ordinary proggers, certainly not in this incarnation! Although the sound is pretty raw, there is no denying the power displayed here. The "Larks" tracks are given cursory airings, often seeming unfinished or stripped down, the band obviously not yet comfortable with them. "Exiles" still features some awesome soling by underrated violinist David Cross, whilst the rawness on "Easy Money", coupled with Muir's bonkers percussion (all crashing metal and wild gongs), make John Wetton's strained vocals more appealing. But the band truly takes wings on the three wild improvs, called "Zoom" (20+ minutes), "Zoom Zoom" (44 minutes!!!!) and "Z'Zoom". All are mighty and LOUD, but "Zoom Zoom" really takes the biscuit - a never-ending roar-a-thon, between screaming hard rock, caterwauling free-jazz and unrelenting noise. Robert Fripp, Britain's great unsung guitarist, is the big star here, mashing up his guitar with a reckless abandon he would hardly ever display again. It's mighty and unpredictable, a truly phenomenal track from a truly monumental live album.


Soft Machine were an altogether different beast - measure, subtle and sophisticated in a typically Canterbury Scene kind of way, as expertly demonstrated on Grides (Cuneiform Records, 2006), an archival release that shows them at the height of their Third- and Fourth-era powers. Soft Machine were natural improvisers (unlike, say, Yes or Genesis), capable of transporting each other into unknown directions, playing off each others virtuosity. But this was no self-satisfied ELP-ish wank, more a curious, intrigued improvisation lifted from jazz. Grides is a truly jazz live album, with a quiet, respectful audience and amazing sound. The great tracks are omnipresent, from Third's "Facelift", "Slightly All The Time" and "Out-Bloody-Rageous" to ones I knew less (not actually owning a full copy of Fourth) such as "Virtually" (a joyous surprise featuring saxophonist Elton Dean at his best) and "Teeth". The one regret is an absence of Robert Wyatt's singular vocals, but thus is still a much appreciated treat worth lapping up while you can.


Reissue of the month has to go to the very new re-release of Nurse With Wound's seminal debut album Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella (United Diaries, 1980; United Jnana, 2010), one of the most important -and difficult- albums of all time. It's long been an illegal download treasure of mine, due to its unavailability on CD, so this reissue, which I immediately dashed to the shops to purchase, is a blessing. If you don't know Chance Meeting, you may be in for a shock upon hearing it the first time. Nurse With Wound took the post-punk template beyond anything remotely musical, using ramshackle instruments to create insane free noise compositions that saturate the speakers and drench the mind and ears in pure sound. Only the opener "Two Mock Projections" offers any sort of concession to "accessible" music, via some free-form electric guitar soloing. The rest is awe-inspiring noise, the birth of noise as a genre unto itself, all screaming electronics, unintelligible chanted vocals and mashed up percussion. Leader Steve Stapleton, who had blagged his way into getting studio time and is also the only remaining member from this album, was a disciple of Faust and Amon Duul II in Germany, and their psychedelic and avant-garde influences can be heard here. But above all, Chance Meeting is the work of forward-thinking pioneers, and deserves its place as a maverick classic of modern British music.


So, quite a few golden oldies in there. Oh well, there'll be time for a full Skullflower retrospective (I've discovered even more of their superb work since last time!), Cadaver in Drag, To Blacken the Pages and Sunn O))) next month. 


To sign off, I wanted to recommend some movies and books, ostensibly, but not exclusively aimed at a gay audience. These may be gay-themed, but it would take a particularly narrow mind for a straight person not to appreciate them.


In movies, I particularly enjoyed semi-documentary Greek Pete by Andrew Haigh (2009, available on DVD from Peccadillo Pictures), an almost true story chronicling a year in the life of a real rent boy, Pete Pittaros, as he aims to become the number one hustler in the world. Realistic and dark, the film shines a white light into the warren-like world of London's rent boys: the drugs, self-effacement and seediness, whilst also highlighting the central figures' (all real rent boys) humanity and emotions. Not essential, but a bold and daring film focusing on a difficult subject.


Also something of a rough diamond and harrowing viewing was Shank by Simon Pearce (also 2009, and available from TLA), a gritty, somewhat amateurish it must be said, look at gay love and desire among skally teenagers in Bristol. Some of the acting is crap, but it is well-written and intense, with an intriguing view of the "hoodie" lifestyle. Worth grabbing if you can get it cheap. It's also rather sexy and violent, if those are your kind of things.


Markedly less gay-themed was The Road by John Hillicoat (2009), an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece novel. In a dying and near-deserted post-apocalyptic world, a man and his son travel through the snow, ash and rain to try and find salvation, living from hand to mouth and faced with unimaginable horror that threatens their very humanity. The film could never live up to the novel's brilliance, but Viggo Mortensen is sterling as the father and the photography and music are simply superb. A guaranteed tearjerker, with a powerful message to boot.

But, music aside, it was through the written word that I found the most to get excited about in January. First up was The Sluts by notorious underground gay writer-terrorist Dennis Cooper. It follows Cooper's familiar themes of child sexual abuse, male prostitution, drugs, sex and violence, with a recurring fantasy of killing young boys expressed by older men. It might have seemed a bit tired by now (these themes are recurrent in all his work, from the seminal Frisk to the fantastic Try, one of my all-time favourite books), but he shows considerable intelligence and an ability to reinvent himself by recounting the entire narrative through posts left on a fictional male hustlers rate and review website. Truth and fiction, fact and fantasy are blurred and left to our imagination as the lonely visitors to the site salivate via their keyboards over a hooker named "Brad". It's a fascinating, grim, upsetting and even funny roller coaster of a novel, and one of the most radical books of our time.


More subtle, more emotional, yet oddly more difficult is What We Do Is Secret by Thorn Kief Hillsbery, a book that explores the complex emotions, bizarre antics and wild dreams of a group of punk street kids in the LA of 1980. The kids have just lost their idol, punk icon Darby Crash of the Germs, who killed himself the same day that John Lennon was shot. For them, Crash's death was the bigger loss, and now, as they show a gullible older male couple around their haunts and streets, they have to come to terms with their loss, especially the protagonist, Rockets, a 13-year-old hustler and ex-lover of Darby Crash's. Hillsbery's writing is fantastic, witty and elliptical, full of crazed metaphors and stream-of-consciousness ramblings that perfectly capture drug-addled Rockets' mindset. It can be heavy-going, and a minimum of appreciation of LA punk and the various subcultures of the time may be necessary, but I have rarely enjoyed a book more than What We do Is Secret, and for that I say "Thank you Mr Hillsbery!".


Right, that's that from me. Happy New Year and Happy Valentine's and all that shite. See you soon for some long-delayed ramblings on Skullflower and Cabaret Voltaire!!

The pain of choice

Happy New Year!! All the best for 2010, and all that crap. 


Ahem. Anyway, hello all. So, in the wake of Christmas, I've been doing a lot of music-gobbling, and January 2010 has been one of the most exciting and fascinating months of my life. Ok, slight exaggeration, but screw it - passion sells!


Before all that, though, I feel I should say a bit on politics (groans all round). The UK general election is getting closer, and mostly greeted with relative indifference, including me. I can't really discern that many differences between any of them, once you eliminate the loonies and the no-hopers. It's enough to make you want to give up on the whole thing altogether. That may just be my slogan every election year. 


It's pretty much a foregone conclusion that David Cameron's Tories will get in. So, who to vote for? Well, I will never vote BNP or UKIP, and whilst this may have been the Conservatives best chance at securing my usually leftist vote, given Labour's iniquities, a cursory look beyond Cameron's waffle and posturing soon convinced me otherwise.


How come? Well, it's all very well talking about cutting taxes, and in this economic climate, who doesn't want to save money? But, as this article outlines: http://www.johannhari.com/2010/01/15/cameronomics-has-already-been-tried-in-ireland-the-result, Cameron's approach is bogus, and the cutting of state spending will only lengthen the recession, as is the case in Ireland. I'm no economist, but Vince Cable does seem to speak more sense on these issues, and the example of China is interesting. As is the fact that the debt hysteria is being oversold by Osbourne and The Daily Mail. Above all, I dislike this talk of tax breaks for the rich at exactly the time when society should be pulling together to help those less fortunate. These Tories strike me as just another old Etonian rich men's brigade, happy to help out its own, less keen on securing the future of Britain's poor. After all, as Hari says, who will suffer the most if taxes are cut? Osbourne's millionaire buddies and foreign oligarchs? Of course not - it'll be working class Britons, whose public services will almost inevitably feel the strain.



On a much more personal note, there's the gay issue. Cameron was at one time one of the Conservative party's most vehement opponents to the repeal of that odious Tory law called Section 28. He voted to keep it in place 3 times. That's three! I am willing to believe he may have had some Road to Damascus-esque conversion to the importance of gay rights, but I'm pretty sure it has more to do with the realisation that 3.5 million or so potential voters are gays or lesbians. Call me cynical... But cynical or not, at least he's talking the talk. Except he's not showing the right signs that we, as a group, will be any better treated under the upcoming Tory government than previous ones, except by virtue of existing Labour legislation. 


The single most important issue facing the gay community today is that of bullying in schools. One of the legacies of Section 28 is that gay or effeminate (or "butch" girls) teenagers and children have little to no protection in the playground, and are regularly submitted to verbal or physical abuse. The statistics are scary: even as we are more and more visible in the media or have better protection at work, gay and lesbian teenagers are far more likely to commit suicide, suffer from depression or self-harm than their straight peers (http://www.stonewall.org.uk/education_for_all/research/1790.asp). And teachers are considerably less likely to intervene if a kid is being called "faggot" than if he is being singled out for his race or religion. 


So something needs to be done.Yet so far, outside of fringe leftist parties, only Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats have said they will take any radical steps to fight this problem. Brown and Cameron have been predictably wishy-washy. Whilst homophobic bullying is deemed punishable in schools, nothing will be done to make sure religious schools, where homophobic bullying is particularly rampant (see any report by Stonewall for evidence), comply and crack down on it. If anything, matters will get worse, as both parties are bowing down to the vociferous right-wing religious minority (be it Jewish, Christian or Muslim) and talking about introducing even more faith schools. Clegg has been clear - faith schools, like secular ones, will have to crack down on gay-bashing, and expressly show support to gay teens and children. They will not be allowed to openly teach (preach?) anti-gay sentiments, as many do now under the banner of religious freedom. I may baulk at the idea of telling religious bodies how to behave, but the fact is these schools are paid for by the state, and therefore the taxes of millions of gay people, and my taxes (that word again) should not go towards creating an environment that is inhospitable to gays. What if these schools were teaching the value of slavery and genocide, both allowed in the Bible in the same pages that condemn homosexuality? This is not about free speech, it's about responsible state-funded education. Yet Cameron's stance is even softer than Brown's.


Likewise, the Tory Lords have been doing their utmost to block an Equality bill that would bring Britain in line with European law on this most difficult matter. They want to make sure a religious body can refuse to employ someone, if said person is gay, or of a different religion. As European law stipulates, the Equality laws do not suddenly mean a Catholic church would be forced to ordain openly gay men as priests, or even women (the horror!). It does not mean that Muslim imams would be forced to recognise and marry gay couples. What it intends is to protect people from being discriminated against by employers because of their sexuality or religion. Does a christian faith school's cleaners all have to be heterosexual Christians? What difference would it make were they gay or Muslim or Sikh? It's not about forcing religious bodies to change their way of thought, it's about stopping discrimination. It's one of the few areas I am in line with recent Labour policies. The Tories have not changed their spots so radically on gay issues (was Alan Duncan really the best they could do?). Their recent alliance with anti-semitic, racist, gay-hating extremists in Europe only proves this. Cameron's hypocrisy is vile. It's the equivalent of someone saying "I love black people", then going to a garden party with the KKK. And if you think these European extremists aren't as bad as the KKK, try organising a gay pride in Warsaw. 


All in all, Cameron is as fake as his airbrushed picture (seriously, what the fuck is that?). I don't trust his supposed support of gay rights (it's more a "status-quo-let's-above-all-let-the-religious-nutjobs-keep-discriminating-but-I-love-you-really" stance), and his tax cuts just hide a desire to keep on favouring his rich cronies over ordinary citizens. On top of that, it looks like the BBC, a fantastic institution for all its occasional flaws, will become a major target under Cameron, with his buddies in the Murdoch empire already looking to dismantle Auntie's status and usher in a British answer to Fox News and Sky across the board. Profit over the people - how truly Conservative. Old school Conservative. 


Though, what's the alternative? Another 5 years of Labour's sleaze and incompetence? Visions of them all getting off scot free for the Iraq War? Blech! I suppose that any other vote will be a wasted one, a side-effect of Cameron's rise to power. Well, screw it. I have principles. I will not vote Tory just because I am tired of Labour. And I will not vote Labour simply to keep the Tories out. They both stink. I will agree, The Lib Dems are muddled, and Clegg is as charismatic as a slightly soiled dish cloth. I haven't made up my mind on them, so my vote is not cast. I agree with their policies on gay rights. But I also like what the Greens have to say. And, always nagging away is the fact that voting for either will change jack shit. Argh, the pain of choice. After the BNP loonies, the creepy Ukippers, I have now consigned Cameron's airbrushed Tories to the dustbin of my voting options. But what to choose instead? Seriously, it's enough to turn you off politics forever. Now where have I heard that before?


Phew! Another day, another rant! Back to music, next. That world makes more sense to me... 

Best of 08 and 07

Well, I'm on a roll, aren't I? Don't worry, there won't be 2006 and beyond. Basically, it's only really since 2007 that I've had the financial resources to dedicate myself completely to expanding my musical knowledge. Until then, I had to mostly concentrate my budget on highly-recommended "older" records, trying to amass the best records of each era, before delving into the rarities, bootlegs and live albums from individual years. Obviously, my recent flush period has allowed me to expand my collections of CDs from lots of different years, not just 2007-2009, but that was still by back-tracking since January 07. Effectively, it's only since then that I've been able to really delve into the music that's been coming out each month, so, whilst I could give my top 10 albums of 2006, 2005, 2004 or even 2000, it doesn't feel quite so "legit" for some reason. So I won't. 


And yes, I realise that I come across as a serious mental case here. I'm used to it by now, to be honest.



Top 10 albums of 2007:



1) Baikal by Baikal (Important Records) - see my review from a few months back. Baikal is a humungous slab of rip-roaring excessive heavy psych from the Bardo Pond guys. Sublime and mind-melting.



2) Untrue by Burial (Hyperdub) - possibly the ultimate dubstep album, a dark, hauntingly beautiful urban album of jittery grooves, melancholic electro melodies and lush, nocturnal textures.



3) Why Don't You Give It To Me? by Nathaniel Mayer (Alive) - veteran soul singer teams up with a bunch of white garage-rockers to deliver a groovy, sensual mix of Nuggets-esque psychedelia, raw r'n'b and free-form garage.


4) Souvenirs d'un Autre Monde by Alcest (Prophecy) - one of the best collisions of soaring shoegaze and hard-hitting heavy metal. 


5) Weighing Souls With Sand by The Angelic Process (Profound Lore) - amazingly available on iTunes, Weighing Souls With Sand, like Alcest's album, mixes elegiac shoegaze guitar noise into a crunching metal template to stunning, and heart-wrenching effect.



6) Hunted Gathering by Robedoor & Pocahaunted (Digitalis) - the haunting tribal folk of Pocahaunted duels with nightmarish drone from Robedoor, and both of them are stunning!


7) Live at Massey Hall 1971 by Neil Young (Reprise) - welcome official release of this excellent archival performance that captures Young at his intimate, sensitive best.


8) A Weekend In the City by Bloc Party (Wichita) - a surprising triumph from the indy-rock faves, a stark, emotional concept album that highlights the angst and confusion of the noughties generation.


9) Live 1974 by Harmonia (Gronland) - a weird and offbeat live album where silence competes with noisy drone and Harmonia's hypnotic grooves are at their most stark and robotic. Great sound.


10) Ghosts Will Come And Kiss Our Eyes by HRSTA (Constellation) - an unusual release from the label of Godspeed and other such noisy post-rockers. HRSTA's style is more mournful folk-rock, but sudden bursts of saturated guitar and off-kilter effects make it a subtle and underrated gem.


Best song:



"I forgot" by Baikal. There is simply nothing to fault in this extreme, outlandish and destructively beautiful masterpiece. Kudos to Clint Takeda for the vocals.


Best reissue:



IIIrd Gatekeeper by Skullflower. Any reissue of their early stuff is a delight, but IIIrd Gatekeeper is not only probably their best album, but a strong contender for best metal album of all time! 


Top 10 albums of 2008:


1) A Semblance of Something Appertaining to Destruction by To Blacken The Pages (Colony Records) - one of the deepest, most world-weary drone/doom opuses of all time, a slow-burning and funereal masterpiece.


2) Elegy For Native Tongues by Tetragrammaton (Subvalent) - perfect fusion of extreme drone, shamanic rock and free-form experimentation, with a particularly superb live disc.


3) The Creation of the Universe by Lou Reed's Metal Machine Trio (Sister Ray) - wherein the former Velvet Underground front man goes back to his experimental roots, ripping out a wall of monstrous drone and free noise over nearly two blissful hours.


4) Street Horrrsing by Fuck Buttons (ATP Recordings) - a triumphant debut of fierce harsh noise, alternatively soaring and groovy electronics and demented, driving free-form percussion. Hints of power electronics and post-rock, but ultimately one of a kind.


5) Andre Sider Af Sonic Youth - Sonic Youth with Mats Gustafsson and Merzbow (SYR Recordings) - Well, it could only be superb, really. One of America's true top-class bands join forces with the Japanese Noise wizard and a wild Scandinavian free-jazzer for one long, abrasive and experimental live improvisation. 


6) Jex Thoth by Jex Thoth (I Hate Records) - It's been a while since rock music had been handed the gift of such a stirring, powerful and evocative vocalist, but Jex Thoth is all that and more, as the voice and head of this thunderous, arcane metal outfit.


7) Tilburg by The Heads (Rooster Records) - they are one of Britain's best-kept underground secrets: a proper fuck-off psych-metal band who, as they display on this wild live set, are experts and plugging in, wigging out and frying your mind. 


8) "I Refute It Thus" by Urthona (Head Heritage) - special thanks to Julian Cope for unearthing this one-man noise-fest from Dartmoor of all places. This is heady heathen noise at its most primeval, and one no drone-head should be without!


9) Nothing to Say by Serpentina Satelite (Trip In Time) - these Peruvians actually having fucking loads to say -or rather play-, and they rival The Heads and Acid Mothers Temple for a place as top heavy psych band on the planet. A band to watch.


10) St Dymphna by Gang Gang Dance (Warp Records) - frenetic angular pop with hints of just about everything in it. This Brooklyn quartet should be huge, as their knack for hooks and catchy energy are the stuff most people shouldn't be able to resist! That they are also challenging and innovative is a delicious bonus!


Best song:


"Sweet Love For Planet Earth" by Fuck Buttons - kicks off their debut with a rumble, some buzzing and then one almighty bang! Pure genius from start until the moment it segues into the equally superb "Ribs Out".


Best reissue:


Between Two Skies & Towards The Night by Ilyas Ahmed - I've already waxed lyrical about this excellent singer-songwriter's debut, and this reissue compiles it with the more experimental Towards The Night, making it an essential purchase. Thanks to Digitalis!

The best of 2009 - Ten Great Albums, One Great Song and the Reissue of the Year!!

2009 has been a remarkably good year for music, and an apt way of bidding farewell to the decade. I am determined not to go back over my "best albums of the noughties" list (see here: http://rateyourmusic.com/list/Phimister/20_best_albums_2000_2009), although my recent discovery of Burial, plus great recent albums by Sunn O))), Lou Reed's Metal Machine Trio and William Basinski have made my life more traumatic than I surely need right now!

Not that choosing the top 10 of 2009 has been any easier (I do not have the money to follow Wire or the NME's leads and pick 50). A particular spanner for me was the realisation that Tetragrammaton's Elegy for Native Tongues, the album I have perhaps enjoyed the most this year (old Skullflower and Fuck Buttons excepted) actually came out in 2008. Damn!

But, despite that, there have been more than a few classics and nice surprises, so, in order of preference, here goes!

1. Teeth of the Sea - Orphaned By The Ocean (The Rocket Record Company)
Very underrated but triumphant mixture of just about every righteous and useful musical genre out there, from searing noise, to ambient electronics, to stomping psych metal, via some weird and lush mariachi trumpet sounds. Essential and rapturous.



2. Orthodox - Sentencia (Alone)
Orthodox used to be a rather standard -if powerful- Metal band in the vein of Boris, Melvins and Sunn O))). But with Sentencia, they stripped-down their heavy, heavy thundering to explore free-jazz, experimental and musique concrete sounds, creating one of the most unpredictable albums of the decade, let alone the year.


3. Sunn O))) - Monoliths & Dimensions (Southern Lord)
A good year indeed for drone/doom metal, with the genre's standard bearers delivering their best opus yet, and one that, much like Orthodox, sees the masters of sub-sub-bass notes and droning riffs explore new territories and textures, with strings, keyboards, choirs and trombones adding colour and variety to their monstrous roar.


4. D'Agostino/Foxx/Jansen - A Secret Life (Metamatic)
One of my favourite ambient albums of recent years was this often-overlooked little gem featuring some improvised piano/tam tam jams between the evergreen John Foxx and foremr Japan drummer Steve Jansen, completed by sparse, stark keyboard shimmers from Steve D'Agostino.


5. William Basinski - 92982 (2062)
An excellent and much appreciated return from the man behind The Disintegration Loops series. Again, Basinski uses old tape loops to create odd, gently shifting and highly absorbing ambient atmospheres that manage to evoke images of a sweltering New York skyline on a summer's night. Masterful!

6. Greymachine - Disconnected (Hydra Head)
A surprise triumph was this association between Isis' Aaron Turner and Justin K Broadrick of Jesu. Disconnected is much closer to JKB's old band Godflesh with its harsh industrial sounds and extreme heaviness, but also incorporates the spacey, sky-soaring textures of Isis and Jesu, making this a superb meeting of the ferocious and the graceful.

7. Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport (ATP Recordings)
It may not have been as good as Street Horrrsing, but FB's sophomore effort still showcases this unique duo's absurb talent, as they take the noise-funk of their debut, compress it to buggery and add even more scattered dance/electro beats. The new style of dance.


8. Khanate - Clean Hands Go Foul (Hydra Head)
The swansong of this unique metal outfit shows us just what we will be missing. They are still as harsh as fuck, but were also unafraid to experiment, with vocalist Alan Dubin in particular shining, unleashing his pained, harrowing shrieks over stripped-down, atmospheric, dark ambient metal. Not for the faint-hearted.



9. The xx - XX (Young Turks)
My pop album of the year. XX is a ghostly, sparse album of modern indy rock, tinted by electro grooves and and r'n'b sensibility. Dominated by the superb deadpan vocals of the band's two singers, XX is pleasant surprise to emerge from indy's increasingly dull landscape.

10. OM - God Is Good (Drag City)
Like Khanate, Sunn O))) and Orthodox, Om decided to experiment and play with their uber-heavy base sound, adding droning sitar, electric guitar and synth effects to augment their traditional fuzzed-out bass and scattered heavy jazz drums. Still perfect in so many ways.


Song of the year - "Olympians" by Fuck Buttons. Beautiful, soaring, spine-tingling.

Reissue of the year - Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere by Neil Young and Crazy Horse. Still brilliant, forty years on.

Great underappreciated or obscure albums 9: BETWEEN TWO SKIES by Ilyas Ahmed (2005)

About a month ago, I was asked (by myself, and by someone very convincing on Julian Cope's website - not directly, but at least I can pretend!) to name my top albums of the "noughties". In between many vituperative cursing sessions, I actually managed to come up with said albums. And among them was Ilyas Ahmed's Between Two Skies, perhaps the most obscure album of the entire fucking list (see here for more detail: http://rustedshadows.blogspot.com/2009/11/impossible-task.html).

Ahmed was born in Karachi, Pakistan, but moved to New Jersey, then Minnesota at a young age. Now, it appears he's based in Portland, Oregon. This duality of origin is intrensic to his music, particularly on Between Two Skies. The front cover, after all, depicts a woman in what appears to be traditional muslim/Pakistani garb with her eyes hollowed-out. An odd and troubling image, but one that is perfectly fitting for the disquieting, subtle tones contained within this album. Although lyricless, the ultimate vibe you get from Ahmed's songs is one of a blurred identity, of shadowy unease and lonesome self-reflection. But more of that later.

Between Two Skies was originally released as a CD-R, with packaging hand-crafted by the man himself, so we have to be very thankful to Digitalis records for this re-release (which is coupled with his second album, Towards The Night, also from 2005 and self-released, and which curiously features eyes but no face on its cover - not a coincidence, methinks...). The sound is great for something so lo-fi, and it is one of those aural experiences that is almost immediately rapturous, sucking you in in one go and not letting you go until the record has run its course. From what I can gather (he is after all, a pretty elusive and unknown artist), Ahmed recorded this on his own in a cabin lost up in the dark forests of Minnesota, surrounded by nothing more than the trees. It's mostly acoustic music (only occasional electric guitar drones break from this trend), "folk" for want of a better word, although "heathen" would probably suit better, with Ahmed accompanying himself with delicate acoustic guitar arpeggios, the tinkling of a piano and some vague percussion. Considering he doesn't sing words, his voice is oddly the main ingredient of his fascinating mix. Each track sees him intone soft, wordless chants of such stark, raw beauty that they convey heaps more than any set of lyrics could. Again, you think back to his Asian heritage, with echoes of Sufi or Buddhist chanting, but this has been filtered through his American musical heritage to deliver something pretty much unique, for all the James Blackshaw/Ben Chasny comparisons. His elusive, darting guitar notes, that seem to flit around his voice like persistent flies, echo not the plodding chords of traditional anglo-american folk and rock, but rather the bold, insistent soloing of Coltrane-esque free jazz. It's no surprise that Ahmed names A Love Supreme as a major influence in his musical education.

But trying to decode Ahmed's work in purely musical terms is to miss the point. This is music that functions primarily -you might even say exclusively- on emotional levels. The first melancholic notes of "Black Midas" are enough to get the hairs on your spine tingling, and that's even before Ahmed releases his dreamy, mournful falsetto. When he does, it's musical gold, the kind of primeval, profound sound that can only come from that most elusive and nebulous of human attributes - the soul. Whenever I have doubts as to the existence of such a thing, I put Between Two Skies on.

The centrepiece of the album is the 16-minute masterpiece "To You Soon/Silence The High", an unreal track, where Ahmed's love of experimental music and free jazz comes through most clearly. It's an acoustic and an electric guitar duet (duel?) over increasingly warped wordless wailings, the instruments evoking Sonny Sharrock's staccato solos on 1968's Black Woman, while Ahmed's distant moans come across like a druggier, less directly political, answer to Linda Sharrock's screaming on that record. Midway through, Ahmed introduces jarring percussion, a stunted, halting rhythm that is pure raga, hence re-connecting with Ahmed's Asian roots, although his by now pained vocals come across as much as akin to Native American chanting as they do to Sufi/Pakistani music. But this is not some retro attempt at "World" music, and "To You Soon/Silence The High" also evokes the wordless avant-garde of Yoko Ono's first album. It's electric, even though the actual music is acoustic.

Sitting somewhere between a stripped-down 'Trane (maybe the ambient side of Miles Davis, displayed on "He Loved Him Madly" or In A Silent Way would be the most apt reference point) and the pagan ragas of Ben Chasny, Ilyas Ahmed's music is an odd proposition - deep, dark and meaningful. It's the music of wind-swept steppes, barren plains and snow-laden conifer trees. It's primordial and yet forward-thinking, a music for all civilisations seen through one lost soul's eyes. It's timeless and hypnotic, challenging and emotionally pure. It's essential, simple as.